Ukraine protesters give president ultimatum but agree truce

(KIEV) - Ukraine's opposition agreed Thursday to observe an
eight-hour truce in clashes with security forces after five days of
deadly fighting but threatened to go on the attack if the government
failed to agree concessions.

Opposition leader and world boxing
champion Vitali Klitschko brokered the truce after talks with radical
protesters and armoured security forces on the frontline of the clashes,
saying the ceasefire should hold while he conducts talks with President
Viktor Yanukovych.

The fighting, which activists say has left
five protesters dead, raged into the night at the epicentre of the
clashes on Grushevsky Street in central Kiev, with demonstrators hurling
Molotov cocktails and security forces using stun grenades.

The
bloody clashes, which have turned parts of the usually placid capital
into a war zone, marked a new peak in tensions after two months of
protests over the government's failure to sign a deal for closer
integration with the European Union under Russian pressure.

"By
8:00 pm (1800 GMT) I will return to you and inform you of the result of
the talks," the Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted Klitschko as telling
the protesters.

"Keep the barricades in place but (be) calm until the talks finish," he added.

An
AFP correspondent at the scene of the fighting on Grushevsky Street
confirmed that there had been a pause in clashes and that the truce
appeared to be holding.

Klitschko and other opposition leaders are
due to meet Yanukovych at the presidential administration this
afternoon for a second round of talks.

The opposition has said the
president must agree to three key demands -- the holding of snap
presidential elections, the resignation of the government and the
annulment of anti-protest laws passed last week -- for a compromise to
be reached.

The protesters have marked their frontline with a
semicircle of burning tyres which have sent rancid plume of black smoke
billowing into the Kiev sky and are visible throughout the city.

However
under the terms of the truce, protesters allowed police to douse the
fires with water cannon and now only white smoke was rising at the
scene.

'Ready for a bullet to the head'

Tens of thousands
Wednesday evening had filled Independence Square in Kiev which was the
main protest hub for the last two months, hoping their sheer numbers
would deter any attempt by police to disperse the rally.

They
sought to reinforce the protest barricades by several metres by filling
sandbags with snow, turning the protest zone around Independence Square
into a virtual fortress.

The leader of the opposition Fatherland
party Arseniy Yatsenyuk had warned the protesters that Yanukovych had 24
hours to agree a peaceful solution, saying he was ready to die for the
cause.

"If he does not go down that path then we will go forwards
together and if it means a bullet to the head, then it is a bullet to
the head.

Klitschko told crowds on Independence Square that
protesters will go "on the attack" if Yanukovych does not swiftly offer
concessions.

Oleg Musiy, the coordinator of the protest medical
service, told pro-opposition Hromadske radio, that five people have been
killed and around 300 wounded in Wednesday's clashes.

According to the Ukrainska Pravda news website, four of the five people found dead had gunshot wounds.

Meanwhile
a prominent Ukrainian activist and journalist, Igor Lutsenko, on
Wednesday appeared in public after being abducted from a hospital by
unknown individuals and dumped in a forest outside Kiev.

However a
man abducted with him, an activist named Yuriy Verbytsky has not been
found, and a relative told Ukrainian media that he had been killed in a
forest and she had identified his body in a local morgue.

'This is the end'

A
former MP from Yanukovych's Region's Party who switched sides during
the protest, Inna Bogoslovska, bluntly told the rally on Independence
Square the authorities were doomed: "Viktor Fyodorovich, this is the
end," she said.

But Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who is at the
World Economic Forum in Davos where he faces a chilly reception, warned
that "any anti-constitutional actions in the capital have to be
stopped".

He reaffirmed however that the government was ready to meet the opposition halfway.

"There
are some demands (from the opposition) that could be a basis for a
compromise but from our side there are demands that have to be
fulfilled."

The deadly violence horrified Ukrainians, who have
never witnessed such scenes in their country including during the 2004
Orange Revolution which was almost entirely peaceful.

Amid calls
for sanctions against the Ukrainian government, European Commission has
warned of "possible actions" against the Ukrainian authorities while the
United States also revoked the visas of several Ukrainian nationals
linked to violence against protesters in November and December last
year.

Russia, which has regarded Ukraine's pro-EU protest movement
with suspicion from the start, has taken a different view and blamed
the opposition and West for the clashes.

But President Vladimir
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Russia will not
intervene in the protests and believes Ukraine's leadership will find a
way out.